The pressures that girls and women face to achieve unrealistic body ideals have been subject to public concern for some time. A survey conducted by Facebook showing that social medianegatively impacts body image in teen girls例如，甚至可能促使国会监管。
But girls and women aren’t the only ones who experience negative body image. Approximately1分之一people experiencing an eating disorder is male, according to theNational Eating Disorders Association (NEDA)。
Behaviors often associated with eating disorders, such as binge eating, purging, and fasting for weight loss, are nearly as common among men as they are among women.
In fact, the prevalence of eating disorders in men is on the rise, according to a recent study in the
男性，甚至许多医生之间的假设主要影响女性
为了有意义地解决这个问题，重要的是要认识到饮食失调可以对男性产生的特殊影响，确定谁是高风险并找到治疗选择。
Eating disorders in women are commonly associated with a desire for thinness and weight loss. But the same is not as often true for men.
“The symptoms that one thinks about for a classic eating disorder are extreme or unhealthy weight loss behaviors, like vomiting or fasting, but the idealized masculine body image is actually not toward that same ideal,” says Dr. Jason Nagata, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco, where he studies eating disorders in adolescents.
“A lot of guys are trying to get muscular and bulk up, so a lot of those weight loss behaviors don’t actually apply to them,” Nagata explains.
实际上，长田的研究发现，男性身体的理想正在以截然不同的方式影响男性对饮食和运动的行为。
一个recent study found that
But the pursuit of extreme weight loss can also be a problem for men, particularly in certain high-risk groups.
现年71岁的史蒂夫·沃克（Steve Walk）在高中时在体育馆的地板上倒塌，忍受着厌食症和贪食症，以竞争较低的体重。
走,一个退休的工程师,educator based in Fredericksburg, Virginia, eventually found full recovery. He’s spent years volunteering with organizations like NEDA to help people experiencing eating disorders.
Masculine body image has evolved dramatically since Walk’s school days in the 1960s, with narrowing ideals that haveincreasingly focused on appearance。
但是，您不能总是通过看某人是否在饮食失调中挣扎来告诉您。Nagata说，虽然可能有明显的迹象，但“饮食失调是独一无二的，因为它们既具有心理健康和身体健康的后果”。
Eating disorders can potentially affect体内每个器官系统。对饮食和运动的痴迷会导致对需要紧急治疗的身体健康的严重甚至威胁生命的影响。但情况并非总是如此。
Nagata notes that it’s also possible to be physically healthy while experiencing extreme mental distress over diet, exercise, and body dissatisfaction.
将男性之间的饮食失调视为心理健康问题，对于促进周围的理解至关重要，就像近年来焦虑和抑郁一样。
一个thletes, People of Color, and LGBTQ+ people may be at
Body dysmorphia, an obsessive focus on perceived defects in one’s body, impacts women and men at equal rates, according to the美国焦虑与抑郁协会。
Transgender people may experience body dysmorphiain connection with gender dysphoria，，，，the term for distress over discrepancies between one’s body and gender identity.
“Transgender people, and gender diverse people in general, have a lot of body image concerns, because part of gender dysphoria is about appearance,” Nagata says.
Growing up, Henry Giardina, a Los Angeles-based editor, thought he was tuning out messages aimed at young girls about their bodies — prizing extreme thinness and whiteness — because he’s trans and didn’t identify as a girl.
但是，这些熟悉的压力在他过渡时以改良形式重新铺面。
33岁的贾迪娜（Giardina）回顾了针对年轻女孩的消息。“我正在带他们进去，等待他们可以向我申请的时间。”
一个fter he had top surgery in 2012, Giardina recalls shifting from one locus of body concern to another.
他说：“我身体的问题已经解决了。”“然后就变得像，减轻的体重越多，您将会越多。”
贾迪娜（Giardina）发现他将少年音乐家（如莫里西（Morrissey）和迈克尔·斯蒂普（Michael Stipe））视为男性气质的个人理想。
With ongoing help from his therapist, now Giardina works to actively fight the critical voice in his head and listen to his body. “I’m trying to get back to a natural place of recognizing, ‘Oh, your body knows what it wants.’”
“Because of the potential compounding of messages about masculine and feminine bodies, queer men may be at higher risk for eating disorders, due to “both thinness pressures, as well as muscularity pressures, or a combination of both,” Nagata says.
一个
In addition to distinct body image pressures, other minority stressors like discrimination, or psychological comorbidities like depression, may contribute to the prevalence of eating disorders among queer men.
Images of immensely muscular men have grown ubiquitous, circulating apps like Instagram and taking on outsize proportions in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and on billboards and magazines.
Recent admissions by the likes of Olympic diver汤姆·戴利和“永恒”之星Kumail Nanjianihave pointed to the perils of striving for the extreme muscular physique reflected so widely across pop culture.
But social media algorithms and Hollywood norms continue to propagate body ideals that can be dangerously unattainable.
“Social media was a really, really big factor in my eating disorder,” says Joseph Goldberg, 21, who experienced anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, overexercise, and more, before finding recovery and volunteering to help others.
“我看到所有这些健身人（谈论如何保持瘦身）。
That fed into a fixation on avoiding certain foods not considered “clean,” like sugar and saturated fat. “It got to the point that it would take me two hours to shop for groceries,” Goldberg says, because he would pore over the ingredients on every label.
关于男人应该如何行动的更广泛的文化观念在男人与斗争之间的关系中也发挥了作用。
“Toxic masculinity and the belief that a man has to keep a stiff upper lip at all times, is one of the main causes of stigma that men can’t have eating disorders,” Goldberg says.
That sense of shame and stigma is one reason men may be less likely to seek treatment, or recognize their obsession with diet and fitness as a problem.
一个ddressing eating disorders in their early stages increases the likelihood of achieving full physical and emotional recovery,according to NEDA。
That’s why developing screening measures specific to men, and encouraging a culture of openness around the subject, is so important to combatting the disorders.
While eating disorders can manifest very differently in men, language around their diagnosis remained narrowly
在适用于男性时，已经出现了许多与身体图像问题有关的术语。
Nagata将肌肉畸形（有时被称为“ Bigorexia”）描述为肌肉的关注或痴迷，这可能会导致类固醇的使用和过度专注于运动。但是，从技术上讲，这也不是一种饮食失调。
“Even in the term eating disorders, the focus is on diet,” while one’s relationship to food may only be part of the problem.
Nagata ideally favors an interdisciplinary approach to treatment, including a physical check, mental health evaluation, along with therapy and consultation with a nutritionist, to address all the impacts a patient may be experiencing.
Naming the particular body issues that men face, and raising awareness among those who may be suffering and their medical providers, is critical to developing successful treatment.
Not only that, but knowing that many other men are having similar experiences can be a meaningful part of recovery.
“Understanding that you’re not alone is so powerful,” Goldberg says of his time participating in and facilitating support groups with ANAD (National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders). Especially because struggling mentally with an eating disorder can feel so isolating.
Over his 50 years of recovery and mentoring others, Walk, the one-time varsity wrestler, has found the importance of ultimately normalizing eating disorders and learning how to co-exist.
“激进的接受是一个巨大的事，” Walk说。“饮食失调是世界的一部分，例如橡树和蓝鸟。没关系，”他说。“但是让我们做些事情。”